• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, April 4, 2005

America Online's Spanish-language service, AOL Latino, will launch a new channel devoted to financial issues Tuesday. The new area, "Dinero y Éxito"--which translates roughly as "Money and Empowerment"--will include articles that offer advice about topics such as financial issues, retirement planning, and jobs. The site also will house free English lessons from Berlitz--a two-week-old AOL initiative.

The primary content providers at launch are the Spanish-language publication AARP Segunda Juventud, Homestore, and CareerBuilder.com--which will provide job listings. AOL also intends to tap freelance writers for articles, said Lavonne Luquis, AOL Latino's programming director.

At launch, the site will have three sponsors: Century 21, Wells Fargo, and Ford Motor Co., said Peter Blacker, vice president, international and multicultural, for AOL Media Networks. The companies will be the exclusive sponsors in their categories for the sections of the channel in which they advertise, Blacker said.

Ford also will provide video content, including video originally shot for the Telemundo TV program "Road to Triumph." That show profiled Hispanic small business owners, including suppliers, dealers, and manufacturers that worked with Ford.

As of now, the site has no streaming video ads lined up, said Blacker. But, he added, AOL Latino is ready and able to handle such ads. "We are totally open to any levels of rich media."

Luquis said the company created the site based on user feedback, indicating "a very strong aspirational sense" among subscribers. "It's the kind of thing our audience is hungry for," she said.

In the first week and a half that AOL Latino offered free English lessons to subscribers through Berlitz, 32,000 subscribers took advantage of the service, according to an AOL spokeswoman.

Luquis said immigrants likely account for most of the AOL Latino audience--which the company places at 1.6 million unique users a month.

Blacker said AOL Latino intends to offer leftover inventory on the channel after it launches.

But some say it's not yet clear how large a demand there will be for the spots. Many marketers don't consider the Internet to be the best medium for reaching Spanish speakers in the United States, said Laura Hernandez, a member of the Interactive Advertising Bureau's Hispanic committee and assistant director for strategic planning at Tapestry, the multicultural division of SMG. That's because marketers tend to believe that recent, non-English-speaking Hispanic immigrants aren't as likely to be online as the more acculturated Hispanics who've been in the United States longer. The perception is that "the Internet is not something they're accustomed to," said Hernandez--which makes online advertising a harder sell to marketers hoping to reach Spanish-speaking immigrants.